In a cutthroat smartphone market where it is tough to pull consumers away from some of the juggernauts — such as Apple and Samsung — Motorola is betting on modular accessories that can be swapped in and out to standout.

Purchased by Google in 2011 for US$12.5 billion — which, most importantly, included all of its patents — Motorola was later sold to the Lenovo in 2014 for just under US$3 billion. So now Motorola is back as its own standalone brand and returns to the hardware game once again with the release of the Moto Z and Moto Z Play — the former being their flagship premium model and the latter offering a less expensive alternative.

Josh McConnellThe proprietary connection for Moto Mods on the back of a Moto Z Play.

Both models use what Motorola calls Moto Mods, which have proprietary magnet inputs on the back that allow accessories such as a point-and-shoot camera, projector or speakers to attach to the back and transmit data (allowing for software updates and new features).

After using both phones and the suite of Moto Mods for a couple of weeks now, it’s obvious that these aren’t just a gimmick and actually offer an intriguing value proposition — for a price.

But first, evaluating the phones

Though the Moto Z has been available in the U.S. since June (exclusively through Verizon), it’s now available unlocked and in Canada starting $900 off contract. It has a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 13MP camera and weighs 136g. It’s a quad HD 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 2560×1440 and 535 pixels per inch, meaning it looks great.

Because it’s so thin, the Moto Z doesn’t have a headphone jack and instead can use Bluetooth for audio or the included adapter to convert old headphones to the phone’s USB-C port (sound familiar?). Like with Apple’s new iPhone 7 models, this really doesn’t feel like too much of an issue though in day-to-day use.

Josh McConnellThe Moto Z Play (top) has a headphone jacket while the Moto Z (bottom) doesn't.

Now compare all of this to Moto Z’s less expensive sibling, the Moto Z Play (which starts at $650 off contract). The specs aren’t as beefy, with a Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB of RAM and a 16MP camera (though a higher number, it doesn’t have optical stabilization and has a smaller aperture). It’s thicker, so there actually is a headphone jack and it weighs 165g. The screen is only full HD with a 1920 x 1080 resolution and 403 pixels per inch, meaning compared to the Moto Z it’s not as sharp and apps like YouTube will max out at 1080p (instead of 1440p).

Both come in 32 GB or 64 GB options, expandable up to a whopping 2TB with MicroSD cards. They have water-repellent coating, near field communication for digital wallets, fingerprint reader (though you’ll keep hitting it like a home button) and very impressive TurboPower-capable batteries.

The battery life is rather impressive, easily lasting throughout the day with typical use. Some benchmark tests by other media outlets have batteries lasting nearly a full day in airplane mode playing non-stop video. If the battery does become too low, the handy TurboPower feature gives you up to eight hours of power in just 15 minutes of charging, or in about 30 minutes you can get half of your battery back. Impressive.

Both phones feel good to hold, with the edge going to the Moto Z thanks to its comfortable slim form factor. Sometimes less actually is more as it feels so light, especially compared to Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus. Both phones are responsive and don’t show any signs of sluggishness. If you’re comfortable with Android, you’ll feel at home.

Josh McConnellThe Moto Z (left) and the Moto Z Play (right).

However there are still some hiccups. Though the screens are gorgeous natively — even more so on the Moto Z — not many apps take advantage of the large real estate. It’s not the case with every app, but for example Twitter, Facebook or even Google’s built-in suite often feels like the resolution isn’t appropriate, with buttons or text taking up extra space when compared side-by-side to the iPhone — though often media in the app once opened looks fine. I went into the settings to change the phone’s font down to its smallest size to help free up screen space, but that only changes the text and not other elements. Perhaps this is just a victim of the fragmented Android ecosystem, so they can’t be coded for the Moto series directly.

Both cameras shoot exceptionally well, too. The colours are a bit more vibrant on the premium Moto Z and its lowlight is better thanks to the different aperture. But though it has a quick autofocus and helpful optical image stabilization, you do see some of the Moto Z’s limitations as some photos aren’t as sharp in cases — such as if there are lots of edges or text to read in a wide-angle shot. But if you’re not using the phones for professional photography, it’s plenty capable and beats out entry-to-mid level competitors.

The built-in speaker, on the other hand, is pretty horrible. It’s located in the same opening as the phone’s ear speaker, meaning you can expect plenty of tin-can sounding music or videos. It works as a quick fix, but at peak volumes it quickly starts breaking. Perhaps Motorola just wants you to buy a speaker Moto Mod.

Speaking of which…

Moto Mods: Choose-your-own-adventure accessories the differentiator

What Motorola hopes will woo over users is its line of Moto Mods that work with both the Moto Z and Moto Z Play. On the bottom back of the phones are 16 small metal circles and a magnetic hole that allow various accessories to snap on and off as desired.

So, for example, you can slap on a different back to change the look of the phone, depending on your flavour of the day or event you are attending. These Style Backs cost $29 and come in different colours and materials.

But the Moto Mods really get interesting with the accessories that add completely new functionality to the phones. Here’s the break down:

Hasselblad True Zoom

The flagship Moto Mod is the point-and-shoot style camera add-on that is made in partnership with cameramaker Hasselblad. Called the Hasselblad True Zoom, the accessory uses the native camera app but gives you a 10x optical zoom and set of buttons on the top that truly feel like a standalone point and shoot camera. It comes with its own carrying case, too, so the idea is that if you are out and want to quickly snap a picture of something far away you can reach into your bag and pull out the accessory to attach to your phone.

Josh McConnellThe Hasselblad True Zoom accessory on a Moto Z.

The Hasselblad True Zoom has its own flash, better lowlight functionality than the phone’s built-in camera and optical image stabilization for still photos. You do lose megapixels though, moving down to 12 instead of the 13 megapixels in the phone’s camera, meaning other smartphone cameras can pump out better close-up shots. But the big thing here is the 10x zoom without losing image quality. The zoom works for video, too, but the quality is noticeably decreased because it switches to digital image stabilization and only shoots 1080p.

Here are three photos taken with the Hasselblad True Zoom without physically moving. The first is in default position, the second is at 5x zoom and the final is 10x zoom. You can click the images to enlarge.

Josh McConnellThe Hasselblad True Zoom on a Moto Z at its default position (1x zoom).

Josh McConnellThe Hasselblad True Zoom on a Moto Z at 5x zoom.

Josh McConnellThe Hasselblad True Zoom on a Moto Z at 10x zoom.

The Hasselblad True Zoom releases in October for $349.

Motorola Insta-Share Projector

The other really nifty accessory is Motorola’s Insta-Share Projector, which once you attach will project the phone’s contents on the wall up to 70” in size. It has a built-in stand so you can rest the phone and either use the screen or a Bluetooth accessory to control whichever app you’re projecting. The accessory has Auto-Keystone correction up to +/- 40 degrees, so as you change the angle of the phone (say, move from the ceiling to the wall) it will adjust the angle of the projection accordingly.

The contrast ratio is 400:1 and it has 50 lumens, meaning it works pretty well in dark and lowlight situations, especially for video or gaming. In brighter rooms it will be fine for presentations or work situations, but you won’t want to use it for anything too detailed.

Josh McConnellThe Motorola Insta-Share Projector on a Moto Z.

The resolution is only 480p though, and you’ll need to charge it separately. Want to watch a long movie? You’ll definitely need to plug it into the wall, since it only gets about an hour of battery life, plus you’ll want to hook up an external speaker because of the poor built-in speakers.

That said, the projector is still a great accessory for those who want to quickly set up Netflix at the cottage, show a fun video to a group of people or if you want to do a quick work presentation. It’ll set you back $399 though, which is a pretty hefty price for an accessory.

JBL SoundBoost Speaker

If you find the audio quality of the Moto Z and Moto Z Play’s built-in speakers pretty bad, which they are, then the JBL Soundboost Speaker is a decent option. Attach it on the back and flip out the kickstand for better music and video audio quality, plus it can get relatively loud if you want to quickly throw something on for small gatherings. It can hit about 10 hours worth of battery life as well, which is nice.

Josh McConnellThe JBL SoundBoost on a Moto Z.

That said, aside from the on-the-go convenience, the audio quality still isn’t fantastic. When you get closer to its maximum volume, the audio does start to pop and gets muddy. It’s great for a few people nearby, but a standalone speaker with Bluetooth functionality may be a better option if you’re looking to play music at a party.

Then again, the JBL Soundboost Speaker is designed to be quick, light and more for on-the-go purposes, and it does do all of that just fine. It has a $99 price tag.

Incipio offGRID Power Pack

As previously mentioned, both the Moto Z and the Moto Z Play have pretty fantastic battery life, plus the TurboPower charging feature makes topping up really quick. But if you still find yourself in need of some extra juice, you can pick up the Incipio offGRID Power Pack to attach on the back and essentially double the phone’s power.

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Realistically, most people probably won’t need the accessory, but it is a nice option for those who may do intensive tasks for long periods of time and there really are no complaints to find with it. It costs $89.

Final thoughts: Motorola is back

The flagship Moto Z and cheaper Moto Z Play are both excellent Android phones that I found myself genuinely impressed with overall. Starting at $650 outright, the Moto Z Play in particular is a great value for a mid-range smartphone if you can live with some spec sacrifices.

The Moto Z is aimed to be a premium product at a premium price ($900) and it definitely shows in day-to-day use with a better camera, screen and form factor. But now you are entering the iPhone 7’s price range, which has an appealing value proposition with a better camera and better use of screen real estate (albeit you’d get the smaller 4.7-inch iPhone).

The biggest problem with the Moto Z and Moto Z Play is also its best feature: the Moto Mods. Quickly swapping out the back of the phone with various accessories for a variety of purposes is not just a great idea, but it’s a great conversation starter when you show it off to people. However it’s a very expensive proposition when compared to alternatives out there since you have to purchase everything separately, especially considering the flagship Moto Mods — like the projector and camera — costing several hundred dollars each.

Nonetheless, the Moto Z is a solid phone that feels great and is worth checking out if you’re in the market for a new Android device.

Or, if you’re an iPhone user wanting to test the Android waters, the Moto Z Play is a great less expensive option while also making the Moto Mods look a little more affordable.

Just as rumours had indicated, it comes with a giant 6-inch screen and is made by Motorola.

Nexus 6 will be available for pre-order through the Google Play Store later this month starting at $749 in Canada. That’s a lot more expensive that Google’s Nexus phones have sold for in the past.

The Nexus 5 sells for $349 off-contract.

Nexus 6 will also be available through carrier partners later this year, Motorola Mobility Canada said in a statement.

Google also says the Nexus 6 will be available through all five major carriers in the U.S. — including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. This is surprising, since Google previously only sold its phones through the Google Play store and T-Mobile.

The Nexus 6 is going to look gigantic compared to your average smartphone.

With it’s 5.9-inch screen, it’s even larger than the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus and 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 4. It’s one inch shy of being the same size as Google’s Nexus 7 tablet.

As we expected, the phone will come with a 5.9-inch screen with a resolution of 1440 x 2560. It’ll feature a 13-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel front camera, and a 3,200 mAh battery.

Naturally, the phone will also come with Android Lollipop out of the box.

Google’s new Nexus phone looks almost identical to the new Moto X device that Motorola introduced last month. Judging by the photos on Google’s Nexus page, it looks like the Nexus 6 will feature extremely thin side bezels, too.

Google also took the wraps off its new Nexus 9 tablet, which has been rumoured to be in the making for the past few months.

Made by HTC, the Nexus 9 will come with an 8.9-inch screen and a brushed aluminum build. It’ll be available for preorder on Oct. 17 and will start selling on Nov. 3.

Google’s new Nexus tablet will run on chip maker Nvidia’s new 64-bit K1 processor, which doesn’t come as too much of a surprise considering the company accidentally outed this detail in a legal document.

There will be an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front.

Google unveiled its new tablet just one day before Apple is expected to introduce its new successor to the iPad Air.

And the details don’t come as too much of a surprise — nearly every single detail about both the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 had leaked long before Google’s announcement.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/personal-tech/nexus-6-unveiled-google-incs-new-6-inch-smartphone-price-starts-at-749/feed0stdgoogle-nexus-6Nexus6MotorolaNexus9OfficialFrom pioneer to playing catch-up: How Motorola lost its edgehttp://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/from-pioneer-to-playing-catch-up-how-motorola-lost-its-edge
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/from-pioneer-to-playing-catch-up-how-motorola-lost-its-edge#respondSat, 06 Sep 2014 11:34:01 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=472667

Standing outside of the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue in New York City on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper made a phone call that changed the landscape of communication forever.

Mr. Cooper, an inventor with Motorola, made the first private cellphone call to the head of research at Bell Labs inside the hotel on a 10-inch DynaTAC handset prototype — earning him the title of father of the mobile phone.

MotorolaAfter a decade of honing and perfecting the technology, Motorola produced the first commercially-available cellphone: the DynaTAC 8000x.

After a decade of honing and perfecting the technology, Motorola produced the first commercially-available cellphone: the DynaTAC 8000x.

The Motorola name is not uttered by technology aficionados with the same breathlessness as Apple or Samsung these days, making it easy to forget that it was this 86-year-old U.S. company that kicked off the cellphone revolution in the first place.

This innovation spurred a wave of rival products from virtually every electronics manufacturer — devices which in turn evolved into the smartphone devices of today.

“[Motorola] were the ones that were sort of credited as starting the cellphone revolution,” said Brian Blau, Gartner’s research director of consumer technologies, based in San Francisco.

“You jump forward to today, and you have to say to yourself: ‘My gosh, what happened?”

Yet, it was largely overshadowed by hype surrounding Apple Inc.’s upcoming launch on Tuesday, when a new iPhone and a wearable computer dubbed the iWatch are expected to be revealed.

Meanwhile, Motorola is in the process of being sold for a relative song. Motorola Mobility (its name since the cellphone and home set-top box division was separated from the company’s public safety and enterprise division in 2011) is being sold by Google Inc. to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. for US$2.91-billion — a fraction of the US$12.5-billion the Mountain View, Calif.-search company paid just three years ago.

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The price tag reflects that Google will retain the vast majority of Motorola’s thousands of patents in the sale, but also how the handset maker had been bleeding money in recent years, even under the search company’s deep-pocketed wing.

So how did Motorola go from being a mobile communications pioneer to holding just a sliver of the global smartphone market last year? Industry observers contend it was blindsided by the smartphone revolution.

It achieved its peak in 2004 with an ultra-thin, all-metal flip phone called the RAZR. One of the most popular consumer devices ever, Motorola sold more than 130 million RAZRs during its four-year run.

But when Apple founder Steve Jobs rolled out the first iPhone in 2007, Motorola was still focused on selling different versions of the RAZR and was caught without a smartphone offering of its own.

Motorola was slow to innovate after the RAZR, said Mr. Blau.

“[It] clearly didn’t react to the smartphone revolution fast enough, and today they’re seen as a minor player,” he said.

Motorola had just 1.4% of the worldwide smartphone market last year, according to Gartner, placing it behind BlackBerry Ltd., which had 1.9%.

When Motorola finally decided to develop a smartphone, its own operating systems were not up to par. It had primarily been a hardware — not a software — company, said Frank Gillett, industry analyst with Forrester Research.

The company’s first smartphone offering in 2009 was the DROID — a solid effort, but it came more than two years after the iPhone hit the market, said Mr. Blau.

“When we did see the first [Motorola] smartphones, they were just as compelling — and they were late,” said Mr. Blau.

Google bought Motorola Mobility in 2011, a move that gave it access to the handset maker’s patent trove and allowed it to exert more control over the Android experience.

The first Motorola smartphone produced under Google ownership was the Moto X in August 2013. It was well received but didn’t stand out enough. Demand was tepid, and it fell behind.

“It was always going to be a tricky thing to own a handset maker that then competed with other licensees of Android [such as Samsung and HTC],” said Mr. Gillett. “In a sense, [Google] didn’t feel like they could throw huge deep-pocketed investment at them.”

The sale to Lenovo, announced in January and expected to be finalized by year’s end pending regulatory approval, could breathe new life into Motorola.

It gives the Chinese manufacturer of personal computers a foothold in the lucrative North American and European smartphone markets. Lenovo already produces Android-based smartphones, but has ambitions to be a major global player.

The purchase also gives Lenovo access to the strength of the Motorola name which, for all its stumbles, is still recognizable, said Mr. Blau.

“They still have a relatively strong brand,” he said.

And the Chinese company has done well in the past with brand acquisitions. In 2004, Lenovo acquired IBM’s Personal Computing Division and the ThinkPad brand, leveraging it to become the world’s largest manufacturer of personal computers.

“Lenovo will push hard and it is possible they will get the Motorola brand to a level of recognition that the [Samsung] Galaxy handsets are [at],” said Mr. Gillett. “But you can bet that the other phone makers will be contesting that.”

Motorola chief operating officer Rick Osterloh said Thursday he believes the company has found solid ground and has some clear synergies with Lenovo.

“A picture has clearly emerged, which is our future strategy. We are going to focus on a handful — a small number — of great products,” he told Re/Code in Chicago. “This is going to be our course for the long term.”Twitter.com/arminaligaya

Motorola just sent out invitations for a press event on Sept. 4, where it will presumably unveil new smartphones and more details about its Moto 360 smartwatch.

The company didn’t provide many details in its invite, other than the fact it will take place at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart on Sept. 4. However, upon opening the invitation, sketches of smartphones with the letters G and X can be seen, hinting that a new version of the Moto G and the rumored Moto X+1 could be announced.

There’s also an image of a wristwatch, which suggests we’ll learn more about pricing and availability for the Moto 360 — the company’s smartwatch running on Android Wear.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a drawing of what appears to be an in-ear headphone, meaning we may see a new pair of smart headphones from Motorola as well, which could be wireless.

We’ll have to wait until the event gets closer for more details, but the smartphone maker will be competing with Samsung for the spotlight in the first week of September. The Galaxy gadget manufacturer is also holding a press event on Sept. 3, presumably to unveil its much-rumored Galaxy Note 4 phablet alongside some other products.

Google Inc. reported fourth-quarter profit that fell short of estimates, hurt by a drop in advertising prices and a money-losing hardware business as the company fine-tunes its mobile strategy.

Profit excluding certain items was US$12.01 a share, the company said in a statement today, missing analysts’ average projection of US$12.25. The result includes an operating loss of US$384 million from the Motorola smartphone unit, which Google is selling to Lenovo Group Ltd. for US$2.91 billion.

While Google is the Web’s biggest search provider, it’s grappling with lower ad prices on smartphones compared with desktop computers. Even though consumers are spending more time on wireless devices, it’s not enough to make up for the loss of sales from more expensive promotions. The average price of ads declined 11% during the quarter, Google said.

“Expenses are rising faster than revenue, and for a company their size that’s a problem,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners LP in New York who rates the stock a hold. “The fact that click pricing is declining so much means they still have work to do on mobile.”

Google’s shares bounced between gains and losses in extended trading as the Mountain View, California-based company also reported sales that beat analysts’ projections.

The search provider had bought the Motorola mobile unit for US$12.4 billion in 2012, pushing it into direct competition with hardware partners such as Samsung Electronics Co. that use Google’s Android smartphone software.

Motorola again weighed on results during the fourth quarter. The unit’s revenue fell 18% to US$1.24 billion.

While the search provider may be selling Motorola, it’s continuing to invest. Google earlier this month said it was spending US$3.2 billion in cash to buy Nest Labs Inc., the digital thermostat maker led by former Apple Inc. executive Tony Fadell. Google, which had US$58.7 billion in cash at the end of last quarter, said earlier this week it’s buying artificial-intelligence company DeepMind Technologies Ltd.

Advertising Prices

Within Google’s core business, prices for ads fell 11% in the fourth quarter, compared with a decline of 8% in the previous period, At the same time, the volume of clicks on ads jumped 31% compared with a gain of 26% in the earlier period.

“Advertisers aren’t as willing to pay as much for advertising across a mobile format,” said Scott Kessler, an analyst at S&P Capital IQ Inc. in New York. “We’ve seen the pricing continuing to decline.”

Google has been upgrading its sales features. Last year, it introduced an advertising service called enhanced campaigns, encouraging marketers to funnel more of their spending to wireless devices. The company also has been pushing retail customers to spend more on product listing ads, which enable them to use more information in promotions, including pictures.

Google’s shares advanced 2.6% to close at US$1,135.39 in New York. The stock climbed 58% in 2013, compared with a 30% gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

The stock’s trading price is likely to be halved after Google executes a 2-for-1 stock split this spring. The company announced Thursday that the long-delayed split will be completed April 2.

Dennis Woodside believes the first steps on Motorola Mobility’s path to redemption lie in what he calls the “Volkswagen Strategy.”

It has been 18 months since Google Inc. completed its US$12.5-billion acquisition of Motorola, and the once mighty mobile pioneer continues to suffer from falling sales, while struggling to find its footing in a market now dominated by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Ltd.

On Wednesday, Motorola unveiled the second addition to its smartphone portfolio since the Google acquisition, the Moto G, which features a 4.5-inch high definition screen, a quad core processor and will be compatible with the latest version of the Android operating system.

More importantly, Motorola plans to offer the Moto G for just $200 without a contract to users in Canada (US$179).

Just as the Volkswagen was initially designed to offer Germans an affordable automobile option in the 1930s, the chief executive of Google Inc.-owned Motorola believes the Moto G will help bring a premium smartphone experience at a relatively low price to the millions of consumers around the world who have never owned an Internet-enabled mobile device.

“If you look at when the iPhone first launched and started the new smartphone era, the price of the product was about US$650, and today we’re at the exact same price point,” Mr. Woodside said in an interview.

“The screen has gotten a little bit bigger, the processor a little bit faster, but you haven’t seen the incumbent players in the space really trying to move prices down. The margins are still very high … We think there’s a big opportunity to really broaden the market by bringing quality devices in at a reasonable price point.

“Think of it as the Volkswagen strategy; it’s a great product at a great price when everybody else is busy building Mercedes.”

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For Motorola, the Moto G represents the latest pillar of the company’s strategy to appeal to budget-conscious North American users and consumers in emerging international markets.

“The market for lower cost devices is growing much faster than the premium market,” Mr. Woodside said. “People who can’t afford contracts, the pre-paid market, is growing incredibly quickly, and we think this Moto G is really the first device designed for the 500 million people who are going to buy a phone next year, but who aren’t going to want to pay that premium price.”

While the Moto G still lacks some of the technology found in high end devices from Apple and Samsung, Motorola is betting that by offering the Moto G at what Mr. Woodside describes as “not quite one-quarter the cost of [an iPhone] 5S for what we believe to be comparable performance,” the company can tap into the desire of users looking to have an up-to-date smartphone but who can’t afford the smartphones of its competitors.

Think of it as the Volkswagen strategy; it’s a great product at a great price when everybody else is busy building Mercedes

“The top selling smartphone in a lot of markets today has a three inch screen, an OS that is three or four generation olds and doesn’t have a front-facing camera,” Mr. Woodside said.

“It’s basically a low capability smartphone that maybe made sense four or five years ago, but doesn’t compete at all with today’s technology. Your other choice is to buy a three year old iPhone or [Samsung] Galaxy … we think it’s time for consumers to have a third option.”

Of course, Motorola isn’t the only company hoping to tap into the lower cost smartphone market. Nokia Corp. is offering low-cost devices running on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software, Mozilla is working with manufacturers to create Firefox phones and even BlackBerry Ltd. is hoping its Q5 device can help it find success among budget-conscious customers.

“Motorola is playing it by the numbers,” said Kevin Restivo, a mobile device analyst for International Data Corp.

“The growth is absolutely in the sub-$200 category, especially when it comes to emerging markets … but it’s fair to say that the Google acquisition of Motorola Mobility has not turned the company around, in fact, the company has lost smartphone share since the acquisition.”

NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty ImagesThe new Moto G phone starts at US$179 in the U.S. without a contract requirement.

Despite the backing of its parent company and the addition of Mr. Woodside — a longtime Google executive who took the reins as CEO of Motorola when the acquisition was completed last May — Motorola has struggled to find a niche in the current smartphone landscape.

In the most recent quarter, Google said the Motorola division lost $248-million on US$1.18-billion in revenue, compared to a US$192-million loss on revenue of US$1.78-billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Making matters worse, earlier this week the Wall Street Journal, citing a report from Strategy Analytics, reported that Motorola has sold only 500,000 units of its high end flagship Moto X smartphone, a device that many observers thought might provide Google with the chance to build an Android-based device capable of competing with Samsung and Apple.

However, even though Google’s Android operating system powers roughly 80% of the smartphone market, Motorola isn’t in the Top Five manufacturers building devices for Android, according to data from IDC.

“Motorola has the same problem as the rest of the Android vendors [except Samsung] — differentiating its devices and making profit out of them,” said Boris Metodiev, senior analyst with the market research firm Yankee Group.

Motorola, our mission in life, is to enable over time hundreds of millions of people to get access to the mobile Web

“Samsung can do that because of its sheer size and all of the benefits that come with it — unlimited R&D and marketing resources, well oiled distribution chain and enormous hardware proficiency. Samsung is able to throw so many devices in the market and just see what sticks. Motorola simply can’t do that.”

There were some concerns that Google’s acquisition of Motorola might jeopardize the search engine giant’s relationship with other smartphone manufacturers also building devices that run on Android. However, Mr. Woodside insists Motorola doesn’t get preferential treatment from Google, but that the company has a “different level of commitment” to the Android ecosystem.

“Motorola, our mission in life, is to enable over time hundreds of millions of people to get access to the mobile Web,” he said. “That’s our mission, and that’s a different mission than some of our competitors. We need to think about things like how do we grow the market, how do we expand or reduce the total cost of ownership for the consumer, not just the cost of the device … Moto G has some capabilities that allow you to do that, but it’s really the beginning.”

NEW YORK — In the four decades since Motorola first showed off a prototype of the world’s first cellphone, the company has watched Apple, Samsung and other innovators surpass it in sales. With Google as its new owner, Motorola is introducing the Moto X, a phone notable for innovations in manufacturing, as part of an attempt to regain its stature.

Yes, there’s plenty the Moto X offers in terms of software, including the ability to get directions, seek trivia answers or set the alarm without ever touching the phone. There’s good hardware, too, including a body that’s nearly as slim as the iPhone 5, but with the larger, 4.7-inch screen that is comparable to those found in rival Android phones.

But what’s really special about the Moto X has nothing to do with making calls, checking Facebook or holding it in your hands. Rather, it breaks from the pack by allowing for a lot of customization. You can choose everything from the colour of the power button to a personalized message on the back cover.

To make those special orders possible, Motorola is assembling the Moto X in Texas, making it the first smartphone to be put together in the U.S. Motorola promises to ship custom designs within four days, faster than it would be able to if the company had chosen to make the Moto X halfway around the world in Asia, as other phones typically are. (Phones for overseas markets will be made overseas.)

You can still buy the phone the traditional way, in black or white. Walk into a store, pay about US$200, sign a two-year service agreement (or $189.99 in Canada at Rogers on select two-year plans), and off you go with a brand new phone.

But that’s boring.

Just as Apple’s colourful iMacs showed more than a decade ago that personal computers don’t have to be beige or black, Motorola is moving away from traditional black and white. You’re still limited to black or white as your front colour, but you can choose any combination of 18 back cover colours and seven “accent” colours, which highlight the power button, volume control and the rim of the camera lens. There’s more coming: Motorola is testing back covers made of wood, for instance, and it plans to let people vote on Facebook on future patterns, colours and designs.

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

You can choose a custom message for the back of the phone — with limits. I tried to enter profanity and trademarked names and was told, “We’d rather you not say that.” You can use the space to display your email address, in case you lose the phone, for instance. In addition, you can choose one of 16 wallpapers in advance and enter your Google ID so your phone is all set up the first time you turn it on. You can select a different custom message to appear on your screen when you turn the phone on. You can even choose the colour of your charger, white or black.

Choose carefully, as you won’t be able to make changes after a 14-day return window. These aren’t parts that you can simply pop out and swap.

With the exception of US$50 more for a phone with 32 gigabytes of storage rather than 16 gigabytes, there’s no cost for the customization. They will be available at about the same time the standard white and black phones come out in late August or early September. Wood back covers aren’t expected until later in the year, however.

In the beginning, you can get custom versions only with AT&T as your service provider, but other carriers are coming. Standard versions will also be available through Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular at launch. You do the ordering through Motorola’s Moto Maker website, which will cover service plan options with AT&T when you order the phone. If you walk into an AT&T store, you can pay for it there, just like a gift card, but you’ll then have to visit the Moto Maker site and enter a scratch-off code.

So what does all this mean?

At first, I thought of it as a gimmick. But then I thought more about how phones are among our most personal possessions. Your phone contains your private thoughts in email, contact information for your loved ones and precious memories in the form of photos. So I can understand the desire to add a personal touch to the look of your phone, especially if you don’t have to pay more. Keep in mind that your customizations might make the phone harder to resell when you’re ready to trade up for a new model.

In many ways, it’s similar to the way desktops and laptops have been sold. You can go to Dell’s or Apple’s website and order any number of configurations. The difference is those configurations typically have to do with the amount of storage, the speed of the processor, the size of the screen and the software that comes with the machine. With Moto X, you’re getting the same storage choices that other phones offer, but all the other options are cosmetic.

Meanwhile, the Moto X advances hands-free phone use. Although hands-free options are available elsewhere to make a call or send a text, Moto X opens the door to the entire Web. It relies on Google Now, the virtual assistant that retrieves information when you speak into the phone. Normally, you press something to activate Google Now. That’s how Siri works on iPhones as well. With Moto X, you simply say, “OK, Google Now.”

That command is specific to your voice. I asked three colleagues to speak “OK, Google Now” into a phone I trained by repeating the phrase three times. The phone ignored my colleagues, but responded to me instantly once I spoke from the same distance. Sorry, pranksters: You won’t be able use this feature to set 3 a.m. alarms on your friend’s Moto X.

DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty ImagesA reporter views the many options of the Motorola Moto X as the American-manufactured smartphone is unveiled August 1, 2013 at a news conference in New York.

I was able to get the phone to recognize my command from about 10 feet away, as well as close by with an episode of “The Walking Dead” playing at full blast on a laptop inches away. But under those conditions, the service was more prone to make mistakes. For instance, the phone misheard a request for directions to Boston as “directions to fall.”

Even in a quiet room, Google Now made a lot of mistakes responding to requests to call specific people. When I asked Google Now to “call Bob,” it offered me “Emily,” ”Dave“ and ”Super“ — for the superintendent of my apartment building, who’s not named Bob.

I can see this feature being useful to motorists, but it’s imperfect. And if you protect your phone with a PIN code, you’ll need to type it in to unlock the phone, except to make a call. Motorola says it tried voice recognition for passwords, but couldn’t get it to work properly.

There are two things that will work without entering your PIN: You can get a peek at text messages and other notifications by pressing the centre of the screen for a second. If you want to respond or see more, then you’ll need the PIN. You can also access your camera by twisting the phone like opening a doorknob. You can browse through shots you have just taken, but you’ll need the PIN for older ones.

Speaking of the camera, Motorola did a good job of keeping it simple. With Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and HTC’s One, I’ve often hit the wrong buttons for gimmicky features I don’t want. With the Moto X, you have to swipe the screen from the left to access the settings. That way, the buttons aren’t there to hit accidentally. To access your gallery of photos, you swipe from the right. Again, you won’t be getting old images accidentally and miss the chance to snap a new one.

The camera also lacks a shutter button. Instead, you tap anywhere on the screen to take a photo. Keep pressing on the screen, and the camera will take a series of shots in succession.

The screen measures 4.7 inches diagonally, which is larger than the iPhone 5’s 4 inches and close to the 5 inches found on a few other leading phones. Held like a skyscraper, the phone is narrower than most leading Android phones. The edges are curved, but the middle is thickened more than the typical phone. That actually fits nicely in my hands, as the palm isn’t flat when in a grip position. It’s not heavy either, at 4.6 ounces.

Although Motorola has released other phones since Google bought the company in May 2012, the Moto X is the first to be designed under Google. It’s an impressive offering that could make Motorola a contender in phones again.

At 3 p.m. ET, Motorola will formally unveil the Moto X, its newest flagship smartphone and the first product developed under Google’s guidance. Google bought Motorola for US$12.5-billion in 2011 and has been running the company as a separate hardware unit since the deal was finalized in 2012.

That’s when Google installed Dennis Woodside as the new CEO of Motorola, replacing Sanjay Jha. Woodside helped oversee the Motorola acquisition for Google in 2011 and 2012 and has been a Googler since 2003.

But Motorola still had an older product pipeline to burn through before it could start working with Google, which is why it introduced three lackluster Droid-branded smartphones on Verizon. The company threw one of the saddest smartphone launches ever for those new Droids last fall. (It happened on the same day of another big smartphone launch, Nokia’s Lumia 920. That event got a lot more attention.)

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So the pressure is on for Motorola. With the Moto X, it has to prove that it’s worth the US$12.5-billion Google shelled out. It has to prove it can still innovate. It has to prove it can make a device with enough of a “wow” factor to get people to overlook the iPhone and Samsung’s large Galaxy portfolio and try something new.

That’s no small task.

The high-end smartphone market is nearing saturation. Most people who want a new top-of-the-line smartphone already have one. And if they do, it’s probably an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device. That’s why Nokia and other Windows Phone makers have been attacking the low end of the smartphone market with cheaper devices. It’s also why Apple plans to make its rumoured “cheap” plastic iPhone.

The only way Motorola could possibly hope to compete is on price. Offering a premium smartphone with a ton of great features with direct support from Google for next to nothing could be enticing to some. There have been whispers that the Moto X will be priced to move, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Based on the early leaks though, there’s nothing about the Moto X that seems like it can break out the way Motorola hopes it will. It will reportedly be customizable, letting you choose your own colors for the body and add laser engravings. Woodside has already said that the phone will be packed with intelligent sensors that make certain tasks easier. For example, a leaked video shows that you’ll be able to launch the camera app just by twisting the phone.

Those will all be nice perks for some people, but they’re probably not worth US$12.5-billion. And chances are pretty good all of Motorola’s patents aren’t either.

Motorola plans to launch a new, made-in-the-U.S. smartphone, CEO Dennis Woodside said on Wednesday, confirming speculation the once-dominant cellphone maker intends to make a comeback in the hotly competitive mobile market.

The cellphone pioneer announced that it’s opening a Texas manufacturing facility that will create 2,000 jobs and produce its new flagship device, Moto X, the first smartphone ever assembled in the U.S.

The company has already begun hiring for the Fort Worth plant. The site was most recently unoccupied but was once used by fellow phone manufacturer Nokia, meaning it was designed to produce mobile devices, said Will Moss, a spokesman for Motorola Mobility, which is owned by Google.

“It was a great facility in an ideal location,” said Moss, who said it will be an easy trip for Motorola engineering teams based in Chicago and Silicon Valley, and is also close to the company’s service and repair operations in Mexico.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office administers a pair of special state incentive funds meant to help attract job-creating businesses to the state, but Moss said the Republican governor did not distribute any money to close this deal.

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“Motorola Mobility’s decision to manufacture its new smartphone and create thousands of new jobs in Texas is great news for our growing state,” Perry said through a spokeswoman. “Our strong, healthy economy, built on a foundation of low taxes, smart regulation, fair legal system and a skilled workforce is attracting companies from across the country and around the world that want to be a part of the rising Texas success story.”

The factory will be owned and run by Flextronics International Ltd., a Singapore-based contract electronics manufacturer that has had a long relationship with Motorola.

Assembly accounts for relatively little of the cost of a smartphone. The cost largely lies in the chips, battery and display, most of which come from Asian factories. For instance, research firm iSuppli estimates that the components of Samsung’s latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, cost US$229, while the assembly costs US$8.

In December, Apple Inc. said it would move manufacturing of one of its existing lines of Mac computers to the U.S. this year, reversing decades of increasing outsourcing. The company has come under some criticism for working conditions at the Chinese factories where its products are assembled.

Some other manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co., have kept some PC assembly operations in the U.S.

Moss said the Moto X will go on sale this summer. He said he could provide few details, citing priority secrets. He said the idea from the beginning was to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

“It’s obviously our major market so, for us, having manufacturing here gets us much closer to our key customers and partners as well as our end users,” he said. “It makes for much leaner, more efficient operations.”

But Motorola will still have global manufacturing operations, including at factories in China and Brazil.

“Fact remains that more than 130 million people in the U.S. are using smartphones,” Mark Randall, Motorola’s senior vice-president of supply chain and Operations, said in a statement, “but until Moto X, none of those smartphones have been built in the USA.”

Woodside said the Moto X would benefit from Motorola’s expertise in managing ultra-low power sensors — such as in accelerometers and gyroscopes — that can sense usage contexts and power down certain components when not required, thereby conserving power.

Motorola’s engineers have also come up with processors that will help save power, he said without elaborating.

By the time most people reach the point in their careers when they decide to pursue an Executive MBA, they’re likely working far more than 40 hours per week. With their EMBA studies, they can expect to add anywhere from 25 to 40 hours of extra work to that.

“It’s like adding another full-time job,” says Chad Friesen, who graduated from Queen’s School of Business in 2012. What’s more, life doesn’t stop. In his case, not only did Mr. Friesen continue with his responsibilities as Network Manager at

Telus Corp. managing a team of technicians who handle the telephone, IP and TV services in lower mainland, B.C., he also became father to his second child three weeks into his studies, bought a house and moved.

“You find out from the program how pressurized you can be,” he says. If there’s one piece of advice Mr. Friesen and other grads have for those about to begin the journey, it is to realize they will need a lot of support, particularly from their families, but also from their employers.

You find out from the program how pressurized you can be

“My management team was supportive in not loading me up with additional tasks, but that said, I didn’t want to load them up with additional tasks either,” Mr. Friesen says. Allowing for a bit of flexibility is one way employers can support their employees through the EMBA process.

When Rachel Fabugais, human resources director for the Americas and Asia at Motorola Solutions, chose to pursue an EMBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business, her employer pared down what were typically extensive business-travel commitments.

Perhaps that’s why Ms. Fabugais describes getting an EMBA as a team effort, rather than a personal endeavour.

“I had an incredible amount of support from my family and employer and that’s made a big difference in doing my MBA and making the most of my MBA program,” says Ms. Fabugais, who has a 15-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.
“My husband took on a lot of the family responsibilities. And he’s done an MBA before so he understood the workload.”

For this reason, it’s important everyone in a student’s family and support network be onboard and know exactly what to expect, says Mr. Friesen, whose extended family also helped out after the baby was born and whose wife played the role of super-hero.

Ultimately, no matter how much support they receive, students will face incredible pressure on their time and there’s no way to avoid the crash course in time management and prioritizing they will get. In fact, both Ms. Fabugais and Mr. Friesen say that was one of the benefits they gained from their studies.

“It is a really big commitment and it’s a very big challenge, but on the flip side of that I think people find the experience significantly more rewarding than it would be if they did it over three or four years. There is value to the intensity because once they’re through it, they realize they can perform at a whole new level,” says Ryan Stoness, manager of the Fit to Lead Program at Queen’s, which was introduced by the university a few years ago to help EMBA students learn the skills needed to manage stress in a healthy and effective way.

“We look at stress as a necessity to be successful in the EMBA program,” he says. “That’s why it’s done in a short period of time and they’re put into difficult situations throughout the academic process to replicate a high-level, real-world position. In order to achieve great things, great stress is needed, but from a health and wellness perspective, it’s all about how you manage that stress and use it in productive ways.”

The Fit to Lead program covers life coaching, including goal setting, healthy nutrition, fitness and wellness, all geared to help students achieve balance in their lives, not just through the program but hopefully throughout their careers.

Spend time with your family, but make it a walk so you’re getting a little bit of physical activity and not losing touch

“For example, we try to help people understand how just 20 minutes of exercise every morning will give them a higher level of energy and help them feel more productive,” Mr. Stoness says. Effective prioritizing is an essential skill for anyone, but far more so for those juggling as much as most EMBA students have on their hands.

“That was one of the great things of the Fit to Lead program. They’d send out newsletters with tips, like: spend time with your family, but make it a walk so you’re getting a little bit of physical activity and not losing touch,” Mr. Friesen says. “If you tally up the hours, you start to run out of hours pretty quickly so it’s pretty critical that you make those minutes count.”

Sometimes, Ms. Fabugais says, it’s a matter of looking for hidden opportunities. “You make things work during the program. There were times when the family would study together. We’d all be sitting in the same room, doing our homework.”

And when she completed her degree this April, as the family celebrated, her 10-year old son began to consider his future MBA studies, while her 15-year-old daughter declared she was going to go for her PhD.

Financial Post

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/executive/business-education/support-programs-help-embas-manage-added-stress/feed0stdPJT-RachelFabugais-3 .jpgThe most important moments in the history of the cellphonehttp://business.financialpost.com/business-insider/the-most-important-moments-in-the-history-of-the-cellphone
http://business.financialpost.com/business-insider/the-most-important-moments-in-the-history-of-the-cellphone#respondSat, 26 Jan 2013 12:00:43 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=279762

The cellphone is older than you think.

In fact, you can trace its beginnings to radio-powered phones made by companies like AT&T way back in the 1940s.

We traced the cellphone’s lineage to give you an idea how we got to where we are today.

What’s really impressive is how quickly phone technology has advanced over the last four or five years. Innovation is accelerating exponentially. Very exciting.

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In the mid-1940s, mobile telephone service (MTS) devices started popping up. They let you make phone calls over radio waves, but they only worked over a limited geographical area. Sorry, no long-distance calls. Eventually, the technology improved and radio phones were installed in vehicles. This became pretty common well into the 1990s.

AP/Business Insider

The next big challenge for phone makers was to create a handheld device, not something clunky that had to be installed in your car. Motorola won the handheld race. It demonstrated the first handheld cellular phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, in 1973.

AP/Business Insider

Most of those early handhelds from the late 1970s and 1980s ran on so-called “1G” analog networks. The technology wasn’t perfect, and it was relatively easy for someone to hack your signal and eavesdrop on calls. 1G networks no longer exist.

AP/Business Insider

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, carriers began transitioning to “2G” digital networks. These networks provided higher quality calls and were more secure. Variations of 2G networks with faster data speeds and clearer calls still exist today. 2G networks were also important because they allowed you to send text messages and transmit data.

ed yourdon via flickr/Business Insider

Nokia was the king of these 2G phones in the late 90s and early 2000s. You probably had a phone that looked like one of these.

Google Inc. agreed to sell its Motorola Home business to Arris Group Inc. for US$2.35- billion, finding a buyer for a division that sells television set-top boxes while it focuses on expanding in smartphones.

Arris, a cable-equipment maker, will pay about US$2.05-billion in cash and about US$300-million in newly issued shares that will give Google a stake of about 15.7%, the companies said yesterday in a statement.

Google never really wanted the set-top box business. What they wanted were the mobile patents

Google, which acquired the division through the US$12.5-billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. in May, received multiple offers on Dec. 7, a person with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month. Google sought a buyer for the home unit as it aims to devote more attention to mobile devices amid an accelerating rivalry with Apple Inc.

“Google never really wanted the set-top box business,” Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group in Portland, Oregon, said in an interview. “What they wanted were the mobile patents. It was very clear this wasn’t why they were buying the business in the first place.”

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Google rose 0.5% to US$723.50 at 9:30 a.m. in New York, while Arris gained 5.6% to US$15.35. The deal was announced after regular trading hours.

Pace Loses

Pace Plc, a U.K. maker of set-top boxes and a suitor of the assets, said in a statement that it was unable to reach an agreement with Google.

Barclays Plc is advising Google, while Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP is acting as legal counsel. Evercore Partners Inc. is the lead financial adviser to Suwanee, Georgia- based Arris, and Troutman Sanders LLP is providing legal advice. Bank of America Corp. is also advising Arris, the companies said.

Adding Motorola Home helps Arris more than triple sales, on a pro-forma basis, to about US$4.7-billion for the year that ended Sept. 30, according to the statement. The company will have about 2,000 patents after the acquisition, Arris said in a presentation.

The agreement also includes provisions to cap potential liability for intellectual-property infringement. Digital-video recording company TiVo Inc. is suing Motorola Mobility and Cisco Systems Inc. over use of recording technology in the set-top boxes they make.

“Google has taken that risk off the table,” Arris Chief Executive Officer Bob Stanzione said on a conference call.

With Motorola Home, Arris will be able to get products to market faster, expand its customer base and become more “relevant” in the set-top box business, he said.

Newer Set-Tops

The agreement gives Arris patents in areas such as video processing and digital-rights management, he said — plus the right to license additional intellectual property from Motorola Mobility, Stanzione said. Arris sees an opportunity to sell new equipment to customers whose home cable-TV sets don’t support Internet-video delivery, he said.

“There’s an aging installed base of set-tops out there,” he said.

The company now gets about half its revenue from two customers — Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., Stanzione said. Buying Motorola Home will diversify Arris’s sales so that five accounts supply half its revenue.

“This is a transformational deal for us,” he said. “There’s significant earnings accretion.”

Mountain View, California-based Google, also owner of the world’s most popular Internet search engine, said in August that it would cut 4,000 Motorola workers and close about a third of its 90 facilities as part of a plan to restore the hardware firm’s leadership in the mobile market.

Google’s share of the smartphone market will slip to 63.8% in 2016 from 68.3% this year for all devices running the company’s Android software, according to a report from research firm IDC. Apple’s iPhone will rise to 19.1% from 18.8%, staying in second place.

Google Inc revised up the bill for job cuts at its money-losing Motorola Mobility mobile phone unit in the third quarter and warned of further restructuring that may result in “significant” additional charges.

Google raised its estimates for severance-related charges 9% to US$300 million from US$275 million and warned it faced another US$40 million in other costs in the quarter to quit facilities and markets.

“Motorola has continued to refine its planned restructuring actions and now expects to broaden those actions to include additional geographic regions outside of the U.S.,” the company said in a statement.

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Google bought Motorola last year for US$12.5 billion, with the aim of bolstering its patent portfolio in the intellectual property fight its Android mobile system faces with rivals Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

But the Internet search giant has found itself lumbered with a restructuring headache, saying in August it would cut 20% of the Motorola Mobility workforce as it moves to make more smartphones and fewer simple mobiles.

“Motorola continues to evaluate its plans and further restructuring actions may occur, which may cause Google to incur additional restructuring charges, some of which may be significant,” Google said.

The New York Times has previously reported that Google planned to shrink Motorola’s operations in Asia by exiting unprofitable markets and abandon low-end devices to focus on a few models.

Last year’s purchase of Motorola raised investor concerns at the time that the software firm was buying into a hardware business with much lower profit margins and in which it had little experience.

Analysts were expecting Google to wind down many of Motorola’s legacy businesses to fit its strategy.

Google shares were marked up 0.3% at US$764.85 in light trading before the bell on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

We have Samsung Electronics Co. to thank for making the word “phablet” a prominent part of the lexicon, while Nokia Oyj gave us a laugh this week over a bungled ad supposedly showcasing its new Lumia 920’s camera’s abilities.

Nokia’s Lumia Windows 8-powered devices and Motorola Mobility’s new lineup of Droid Razr smartphones, which both debuted Wednesday, aim to claw back some share of the smartphone market from leaders Apple and Samsung.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. and homegrown Kobo Inc. are squaring off on the e-reader and tablet front with Amazon’s ultracheap options expected to pressure competitors to bring their prices down — even Apple’s.

Conspicuously absent from the new-gadget excitement? Research In Motion Ltd., which is busy working on its BlackBerry 10 devices, expected in the first quarter of 2013.

Scroll down for a look at some of the mobile world’s recent announcements.

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The Galaxy Note 2, a phone on the verge of a tablet: Apple’s main rival in the battle for smartphone supremacy, Samsung, unveiled the second generation of its Galaxy Note phone/tablet at a European electronics show last week.

The new version features a 5.55-inch display and an 8-megapixel camera with a powerful quad-core processor. It will run on Android’s new Jelly Bean operating system and comes with a stylus pen for clumsy-thumbs-free navigation. It also has software that recognizes handwriting from a digital pen.

What it means: As Samsung tries to regain its footing after the U.S. court decision against it in the patent fight with Apple, the Galaxy Note phone/tablet is not included in the list of the potential sales ban and could be a bright spot for the company.

The first Galaxy Note did more than 10 million in sales in the first nine months it was on the market, boosting Samsung to first place in the smartphone race. It is undoubtedly hoping to build on that momentum with this new device in the “phablet” category — in between phones and tablets — which is growing in popularity.

The South Korean company also unveiled the Ativ S handset with a 4.8-inch screen that runs on new Windows Phone 8 system last week, pre-empting Nokia’s announcement of its new WP8 devices a week later and possibly stealing some of the Finnish company’s thunder on that front.

NOKIA

Two new Windows 8- powered Lumia smartphones: Nokia and Microsoft, in a joint press conference Wednesday, announced two new Lumia models, the 820 and 920. Both run on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform, come with colourful shells and offer wireless charging.

The new Lumias also feature City Lens software that lets users hold their phones up to see the names of restaurants and shops, read reviews, book tables etc.

The Lumia 920 has a 4.5-inch screen and 8.7-megapixel camera that uses a “floating lens” for software-based image stabilization. The Lumia 820 has a 4.3-inch screen and 8-megapixel camera without the optical image stabilization.

Nokia Oyj via Bloomberg The Lumia 920 has a 4.5-inch screen and 8.7-megapixel camera that uses a "floating lens" for software-based image stabilization.

Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe new Nokia Lumia 920 charges on a speaker. The two new Lumia models, the 820 and 920, both of which will run on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 platform, come with colourful shells and offer wireless charging.

What it means: This is a key product announcement for Nokia, which has seen its share price tumble this year as its once-dominant share of the mobile phone market seemingly evaporated. The company has clawed back from the brink through some shrewd cash management in recent months and posted some decent sales numbers of its earlier Lumia models, but consumer support for these devices must be strong for the rebound to be convincing.

Nokia did not give a clear timeline for the new models’ availability on the market, just that they would be out later in Q4 of this year, which has Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Michael Walkley concerned.

“We do not anticipate new Lumia smartphone launches until later in Q4/12, after the launch of the LTE iPhone 5 and several LTE Android smartphones. Further, Nokia management indicated the new Lumias will launch in limited markets rather than a global launch,” he wrote in a note.

Apart from timing issues, Nokia is also hitching its star to Microsoft and a lot is riding on consumer appetite for Windows Phone 8.

Razr M is Motorola’s new flagship, a smartphone with a 4.3-inch display with an edge-to-edge screen and an 8-megapixel camera. The company also introduced the Razr HD and the Razr Maxx HD, updates of previous models with improved battery life and 4.7-inch high-definition screens.

Jin Lee/BloombergA Motorola Razr Maxx HD, from left, Razr M and Razr HD phones sits on display during a news conference in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012. Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility division updated its phone lineup with three new models, including one with an edge-to-edge screen, in a bid to challenge Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

What it means: Without the introduction of any major features, Motorola’s new Razrs don’t have much wow-factor. One of the main features the company is emphasizing is long battery life — up to 21 hours of talk time for the Maxx HD, or 13 hours of continuous video play on a single charge.

Even though the iPhone 5 is unlikely to beat that — its smaller body doesn’t leave much space for battery — analysts expect the rest of the year to belong to Apple. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicts that Apple may sell 6 to 10 million new iPhones in the last week of September alone. Compare that with the 9 million Motorola sold in the 12 weeks of the second quarter, according to data from Gartner.

AMAZON

Five new Kindle models: Amazon on Thursday announced five new Kindle models: an ultracheap US$69 E Ink Kindle; a new Kindle Paperwhite with a touchscreen and LED light starting at US$119; an update of its 7-inch Kindle Fire with improved hardware and software for US$199; and two 8.9-inch “HD” tablets, a Wi-Fi only model for US$299 and a 4G LTE version for US$499.

The company also plans to offer its own basic data plan for its 4G Fire.

What it means: This is an important launch for Amazon that underscores how its willing to make little or no money selling cheap tablets and e-readers. With Kindle e-readers and tablets ranging from US$69 to US$499, Amazon’s devices are expected to put pressure on competitors’ price points — including Apple’s.

While the new, larger 8.9-inch Kindle Fire puts Amazon more squarely into direct competition with Apple’s iPad, the current tablet market king, the slew of Kindles shows “Amazon clearly wants to compete across the spectrum, not just on the low end of the market,” Ben Schachter of Macquarie wrote in a note.

Still, CEO Jeff Bezos continues to emphasize services over devices, which has been key to Amazon’s success, according to Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. Its data service, for example, is expected to be a disruptive move among other carriers.

“Consumers buy tablets for what they can do with them, which helps explain why Amazon is the No. 2 tablet brand in the U.S.,” Epps wrote. “Amazon’s services are the core of its devices, and the devices enhance Amazon’s service: A virtuous cycle where Amazon gains an increasing share of consumers’ wallets.”

KOBO

The Kobo family: Kobo unveiled a revamped lineup of devices that includes the Kobo Arc tablet, a new flagship e-reader known as the Kobo Glo and a 4-inch palm-sized e-reader designed for young readers, the Kobo Mini.

HandoutKobo's new family of e-readers and tablets focuses on the book lover, the company says.

What it means: Kobo, which was acquired by Japan’s retail giant Rakuten for US$315-million last November, remains a bit player in the highly competitive tablet computing space.

The Toronto-based digital publishing house has sought to differentiate itself by offering a tablet that puts reading first, while giving them the same competitive multimedia options, such as the ability to download apps and videos.

“We’re not going to be going up against the general purpose tablets that you use for productivity and other work functions… What we’ve really done here is we’ve really focused on our core customer, the book lover,” Kobo chief executive Michael Serbinis said.

Many have come to lay the death of Nortel Networks Corp. largely at the feet of debilitating accounting scandals that hobbled the telecom-equipment giant in the middle of the last decade.

As an Ontario Superior Court of Justice prepares to try former chief executive Frank Dunn and two other executives, former chief financial officer Douglas Beatty and former controller Michael Gollogly, next week for fraud, others suggest a considerable share of the blame for Nortel’s moribund fate rests with strategic missteps and indecision at the helm after the trio was fired on April, 28, 2004.

In fairness, by the time Bill Owens, a respected former U.S. admiral, was moved from the board to the CEO position on that spring day the firm’s market cap was a shadow of what it was four years earlier — Nortel’s apogee, as it turns out — while all-important research and development had grown unfocused and was falling behind.

It was nonetheless a puzzling appointment by Nortel’s board. Mr. Owens didn’t possess the level of familiarity with the telecom sector one would expect from the CEO of one of its biggest players. His relative experience included a spell with private Seattle-based satellite firm Teledesic LLC and at Science Applications International Corp., a San Diego engineering company that held private-sector and, importantly, military contracts.

“When Owens was hired, a lot of people thought, ‘Who the hell is this guy? Why would we be hiring someone with no telecom experience? It just didn’t make sense,’ ” a former senior corporate manager who has since joined a competitor recalled this week. “Why for a company as big and viable as Nortel [was] could they not bring in some kind of a telecom insider?”

Mr. Owens, a veteran of 34 years in the military who joined Nortel’s board in 2002, did bring a stabilizing presence, however. Not to mention, in the wake of one of the most demoralizing periods in the 114-year-old firm’s history, some needed optimism.

An air of uncertainty in the company’s direction, however, would soon take its place — and become a permanent fixture.

Looking back, certain former company officials and outside observers say that faced with a fast-shifting global market place, those overseeing Nortel until its filing under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada on Jan. 14, 2009, demonstrated a remarkable deficiency in moving the firm forward.

In early 2005, a little less than a year after Mr. Owens was installed and with the campaign to overcome the scandal in full swing, Gary Daichendt and Gary Kunis, two former executives of rival Cisco Systems Inc., were hired as president and COO and chief technology officer, respectively. The “two Garys” immediately embarked on an exhaustive tour de force review of Nortel’s operations.

What they witnessed alarmed them. “Nortel is an industry laggard,” Mr. Kunis said at the time, “and it doesn’t seem to know it.”

To start, the average revenue generated per employee had declined to less than half that of Cisco workers. Nortel was also slipping in every market it was in — holding a first- or second-place position in only handful of the 30 or so segments the company competed in. Razor-thin profit margins (mid-single digits) left little to reinvest.

“The R&D labs that had produced the world’s first all-digital phone network and won the race to dominate fibre-optics in 2000 had descended into mediocrity,” Ottawa Citizen business columnist James Bagnall wrote in his incisive 2009 series documenting the firm’s decline. “There were flashes of brilliance but no coherent strategy for producing hit products.”

Mr. Daichendt and Mr. Kunis concluded the firm needed to cut half-a-billion dollars in annual expenses, beat a retreat out of markets it had no hope of winning and lead a turnaround by focusing energy on its Enterprise division, the world leader in big corporate phone and data systems.

On June 1, 2005, Nortel struck a deal to sell a portion of its wireless business to Finnish competitor Nokia Corp. In addition, the two companies would partner to sell Nortel’s remaining CDMA wireless system and co-develop a new product pipeline. Nortel would also receive a US$2-billion payment.

Mr. Owens, whose measured disposition clashed immediately with the shoot-first style of Mr. Daichendt, resisted. A power struggle ensued and on June 6, the two Garys — touted as the future leadership of the firm — were gone. Nortel dropped the Nokia deal and was back at Square One.

“Keep in mind, you still had a lot of Nortel people used to the glory days who think, ‘We’ve just got to get through this economy. Don’t tell me what to do, I created this powerhouse, who are [these two] to tell me how to restructure it?’,” the same manager said, asking for anonymity to protect relations at the person’s current company.

Owed some gratitude for stepping into the firestorm left by Mr. Dunn, Mr. Owens has largely avoided scrutiny. It is a burden his successor has absorbed in spades.

Led by chairman Harry Pearce, Nortel’s board set to task in the months after the failed Nokia deal to find an energetic, capable new CEO. On Nov. 15, 2005, Mr. Pearce announced the appointment of Mike Zafirovski.

Hired away from Motorola Inc., the former General Electric Co. executive was steeped in accolades. “Mike Zafirovski has the kind of proven, team-building leadership that has seen him create significant, new value during his career in two of the world’s most important global corporations,” Mr. Pearce said. “He’s the right leader to build on the important work of Bill Owens — and take Nortel to the next level.”

Former employees exulted the new chief. “When he came in, finally here we’ve got a heavy hitter from the industry,” recalls another senior manager who served in Nortel’s wireless unit at the time. “He knows the business. When we announced him as CEO, that’s the most optimistic I and I think the rest of the staff had been in the last three years. It was a huge morale boost.”

It was around then a plan to co-build a new line of routers — hubs that direct the flow of IP network traffic — with China’s Huawei Technologies entered serious talks. Shortly after the appointment of Mike “Z”, as he was known, that deal, too, foundered.

Huawei and ZTE Corp., the two chief Chinese telecom-equipment manufacturers were game changers. Sprung from outsourced production ventures Nortel and other Western firms came to rely on in the early 1990s, time and technological transfer transformed the two into voracious competitors selling products of comparable quality but for far less. A significant number of cellphone and Internet carriers now, including Nortel’s former parent, BCE Inc., use Huawei equipment in some capacity in their networks.

But Nortel’s new Macedonian-born CEO was plotting his own turnaround — one he touted would be studied in graduate textbooks. Like that of Mr. Owens, the new leader’s honeymoon did not last long.

Mr. Zafirovski was hired at a pivotal time of industry-wide consolidation. Commoditization — a price war in layman terms — was unfolding across numerous segments largely as a result of the low-cost wares Huawei and ZTE were flooding the market with. Scale mattered more than ever and Nortel needed to act fast if it was to remain competitive.

It didn’t. Despite seemingly endless discussions with firms such as France’s Alcatel (which would merge with New Jersey-based Lucent), Germany’s Siemens (now Nokia-Siemens) as well as Avaya Inc. (which would buy Nortel’s Enterprise unit out of bankruptcy) the Canadian company failed to pull off a single significant deal.

The former Nortel corporate manager offers an explanation: “The argument, especially from a lot of the old-school guys, was that you can’t chop off one area because the R&D money — even manufacturing — were so tightly tied. It was hard to split them. To me, that always stymied what Zafirovski wanted to do.”

The chief executive also envisaged Nortel as a buyer, something that was becoming harder and harder to rationalize as credit markets began tightening in 2007, making Nortel’s levered-up balance sheet a drag on his ambitions. By the time the executive announced a new vision in June 2008 — more aggressively embracing divestiture with a refocus on optical and carrier services — private-equity firms were knocking at the door, while capital markets were collapsing, pushing the firm into an ever more precarious financial position.

It was a last-gasp strategy. Potential suitors foresaw the CCAA and Chapter 11 filings which impaired Nortel’s ability to attract fair offers for assets, such as its vaunted metro-ethernet business, it planned to sell to keep it afloat through the downturn.

On Dec. 10, 2008, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Nortel had hired external consultants to explore a Chapter 11 filing. It was a faith-sapping blow among customers. The firm filed a month and four days later.

On a May evening the following spring, Mr. Zafirovski dined with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Industry Minister Tony Clement. Among other topics, the easy-going conversation settled on how to improve foreign investment in the space. A subject that received sparse attention was what to do about Nortel.

Indeed, there was little to talk about by then as the firm had already commenced selling itself off. The previous fall before Nortel’s filing, federal officials had rebuffed a plea from the executive for a $1-billion state injection.

In an interview with the National Post in August 2009 as he was stepping down, the 55-year-old Mr. Zafirovski said Ottawa should have interceded with financial aid. “I feel it is something the government should have done.”

The question many asked at the time was, after a half-decade of indecision, what would the cash infusion buy? Time, it appeared, was something the firm had already wasted much of.

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published Why Smart Executives Fail 8 years ago.

In it, he shared some of his research on what over 50 former high-flying companies – like Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn – did to become complete failures. It turns out that the senior executives at the companies all had 7 Habits in common. Finkelstein calls them the Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.

These traits can be found in the leaders of current failures like Research In Motion (RIMM), but they should be early-warning signs (cautionary tales) to currently unbeatable firms like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN). Here are the habits, as Finkelstein described in a 2004 article:

Habit # 1: They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment

This first habit may be the most insidious, since it appears to be highly desirable. Shouldn’t a company try to dominate its business environment, shape the future of its markets and set the pace within them? Yes,but there’s a catch. Unlike successful leaders, failed leaders who never question their dominance fail to realize they are at the mercy of changing circumstances.They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

CEOs who fall prey to this belief suffer from the illusion of personal pre-eminence: Like certain film directors, they see themselves as the auteurs of their companies. As far as they’re concerned, everyone else in the company is there to execute their personal vision for the company. Samsung’s CEO Kun-Hee Lee was so successful with electronics that he thought he could repeat this success with automobiles. He invested $5 billion in an already oversaturated auto market. Why? There was no business case. Lee simply loved cars and had dreamed of being in the auto business.

Warning Sign for #1: A lack of respect

Habit #2: They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests

Like the first habit, this one seems innocuous, perhaps even beneficial. We want business leaders to be completely committed to their companies, with their interests tightly aligned with those of the company. But digging deeper, you find that failed executives weren’t identifying too little with the company, but rather too much. Instead of treating companies as enterprises that they needed to nurture, failed leaders treated them as extensions of themselves. And with that, a “private empire” mentality took hold.

CEOs who possess this outlook often use their companies to carry out personal ambitions. The most slippery slope of all for these executives is their tendency to use corporate funds for personal reasons. CEOs who have a long or impressive track record may come to feel that they’ve made so much money for the company that the expenditures they make on themselves, even if extravagant, are trivial by comparison. This twisted logic seems to have been one of the factors that shaped the behavior of Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco. His pride in his company and his pride in his own extravagance seem to have reinforced each other. This is why he could sound so sincere making speeches about ethics while using corporate funds for personal purposes. Being the CEO of a sizable corporation today is probably the closest thing to being king of your own country, and that’s a dangerous title to assume.

Warning Sign for #2: A question of character

Habit #3: They think they have all the answers

Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve been taught to admire for decades: a dynamic leader making a dozen decisions a minute, dealing with many crises simultaneously, and taking only seconds to size up situations that have stumped everyone else for days. The problem with this picture is that it’s a fraud. Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel they have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning new ones.

CEO Wolfgang Schmitt of Rubbermaid was fond of demonstrating his ability to sort out difficult issues in a flash. A former colleague remembers that under Schmitt,” the joke went, ‘Wolf knows everything about everything.’ In one discussion, where we were talking about a particularly complex acquisition we made in Europe, Wolf, without hearing different points of view, just said, ‘Well, this is what we are going to do.’” Leaders who need to have all the answers shut out other points of view. When your company or organization is run by someone like this, you’d better hope the answers he comes up with are going to be the right ones. At Rubbermaid they weren’t. The company went from being Fortune’s most admired company in America in1993 to being acquired by the conglomerate Newell a few years later.

CEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think that it is their job to get everyone to buy into it. Anyone who doesn’t rally to the cause is undermining the vision. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or leave.

The problem with this approach is that it’s both unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone unanimously endorse their vision to have it carried out successfully. In fact, by eliminating all dissenting and contrasting viewpoints, destructive CEOs cut themselves off from their best chance of seeing and correcting problems as they arise. Sometimes CEOs who seek to stifle dissent only drive it underground. Once this happens, the entire organization falters. At Mattel, Jill Barad removed her senior lieutenants if she thought they harbored serious reservations about the way that she was running things. Schmitt created such a threatening atmosphere at Rubbermaid that firings were often unnecessary. When new executives realized that they’d get no support from the CEO, many of them left almost as fast as they’d come on board. Eventually, these CEOs had everyone on their staff completely behind them. But where they were headed was toward disaster. And no one was left to warn them.

Warning Sign for #4: Executive departures

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image

You know these CEOs: high-profile executives who are constantly in the public eye. The problem is that amid all the media frenzy and accolades, these leaders’ management efforts become shallow and ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things.

Behind these media darlings is a simple fact of executive life: CEOs don’t achieve a high level of media attention without devoting themselves assiduously to public relations. When CEOs are obsessed with their image, they have little time for operational details. Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski sometimes intervened in remarkably minor matters, but left most of the company’s day-to-day operations unsupervised.

As a final negative twist, when CEOs make the company’s image their top priority, they run the risk of using financial-reporting practices to promote that image. Instead of treating their financial accounts as a control tool, they treat them as a public-relations tool. The creative accounting that was apparently practiced by such executives as Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling or Tyco’s Kozlowski is as much or more an attempt to promote the company’s image as it is to deceive the public: In their eyes, everything that the company does is public relations.

Warning Sign of #5: Blatant attention-seeking

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles

Part of the allure of being a CEO is the opportunity to espouse a vision. Yet, when CEOs become so enamored of their vision, they often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. And when it turns out that the obstacles they casually waved aside are more troublesome than they anticipated, these CEO shave a habit of plunging full-steam into the abyss. For example, when Webvan’s core business was racking up huge losses, CEO George Shaheen was busy expanding those operations at an awesome rate.

Why don’t CEOs in this situation re-evaluate their course of action, or at least hold back for a while until it becomes clearer whether their policies will work? Some feel an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make, because if they admit to being fallible, their position as CEO might seem precarious. Once a CEO admits that he or she made the wrong call, there will always be people who say the CEO wasn’t up to the job. These unrealistic expectations make it exceedingly hard for a CEO to pull back from any chosen course of action, which not surprisingly causes them to push that much harder. That’s why leaders at Iridium and Motorola (MMI) kept investing billions of dollars to launch satellites even after it had become apparent that land-based cellphones were a better alternative.

Warning Sign of #6: Excessive hype

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past

Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline by reverting to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. In their desire to make the most of what they regard as their core strengths, they cling to a static business model.They insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past. Instead of considering a range of options that fit new circumstances, they use their own careers as the only point of reference and do the things that made them successful in the past. For example, when Jill Barad was trying to promote educational software at Mattel,she used the promotional techniques that had been effective for her when she was promoting Barbie dolls, despite the fact that software is not distributed or bought the way dolls are.

Frequently, CEOs who fall prey to this habit owe their careers to some “defining moment,” a critical decision or policy choice that resulted in their most notable success. It’s usually the one thing that they’re most known for and the thing that gets them all of their subsequent jobs. The problem is that after people have had the experience of that defining moment, if they become the CEO of a large company, they allow their defining moment to define the company as well – no matter how unrealistic it has become.

Warning Sign of #7: Constantly referring to what worked in the past

The bottom line: If you exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to stamp them out from your repertoire. If your boss or several senior executives at your company exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to start looking for a new job.

Even before it was released, Steve Jobs didn’t think much of the BlackBerry PlayBook.

It was no secret that Apple Inc.’s celebrity chief executive didn’t think too highly of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. Over the years, Mr. Jobs seemed to delight in pointing out how the iPhone was outperforming RIM’s BlackBerrys at every opportunity, regularly taking shots at the Waterloo, Ont. company and its products.

But in October, 2010, Mr. Jobs took his heated war with RIM one step further when he made a surprise appearance on a call with investors to deliver a scathing rant about RIM’s future and its business strategy, before launching into a tirade about the futility of seven-inch tablets, just a few weeks after RIM had unveiled the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The PlayBook, just like all other seven-inch tablets, Mr. Jobs believed, would be dead on arrival.

“Seven inch tablets are tweeners; too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad,” Mr. Jobs said, before pointing out that the iPad’s competitors, despite producing smaller tablets, were having trouble bringing the prices of their touchscreen computers down to the level of the 10-inch iPad, which sells a base model at US$499.

“These are among the reasons that the current crop of seven-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.”

At the time, Mr. Jobs’ condemnation of his competitors was directed only at tablets of the seven-inch variety. But now, 14 months later, it appears the Silicon Valley legend may have seen the writing on the wall earlier than anyone else, and that his disparaging remarks could now be applied to tablets of all sizes which have attempted to compete with the iPad.

Apple’s competitors — including RIM, Hewlett-Packard Co., and manufacturers such as Samsung Group Ltd. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. who had adopted Google Inc.’s Android software — were put in the unenviable position of playing catch up, scrambling to develop iPad contingency plans.

Apple’s competitors were thus faced with a difficult decision: either create an iPad competitor as quickly as possible, rush it into the market and hope to ride the rising tablet tide, or sit back and watch the market develop while looking for an opening, while running the risk of being left behind by the rest of the industry.

As the the second anniversary of the iPad launch approaches, the technology landscape is littered with the remains of disappointing and failed tablets which were rushed to market too quickly in an effort to cash in on iPad-mania.

It now appears that almost every one of the promising early followers in the tablet space were lambs to the slaughter, costing their parent companies billions in the process.

RIM’s PlayBook was a disappointment from the start, landing to disappointing reviews, missing features and a dearth of applications. HP scrapped the TouchPad after just a few weeks of soft sales in the midst of a leadership crisis at the world’s largest computer maker. And while Motorola’s Xoom tablet stole the show at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January, but consumers balked at the US$799 price tag.

But now, a new generation of tablets, headlined by Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, portends to reshape the market for touchscreen mobile devices. With different cost structures, new business models and dramatically lower price points, these new entrants appear to have evolved from sober second thoughts and a “wait and see” approach.

“It’s certainly something we’ve seen in other areas of business; you make more of an informed decision when you hold back — you can see where the gaps are in the market,” said Mihkel Tombak, director of the Master’s of Management of Innovation program at the University of Toronto.

“Certainly there’s a lot lower risk in terms of development costs in that you can have much more focused development and you can save a lot of money in terms of the product that you develop, and that gets reflected in the cost of device. You’re either a very close follower, or you hang back and see where the gaps are and save yourself a lot of money.”

Two years after the launch of the iPad, Apple still controls nearly two-thirds of the global tablet market. According to data from IDC Corp., Apple sold 11.1 million iPads in the third quarter of 2011, up from 9.3 million in the second quarter, accounting for about 61.5% of the global tablet market.

While Samsung maintained its No. 2 ranking, the Korean company captured just 5.6% of the market. HP’s TouchPad fire sale — the company slashed the price of the device to just US$99 in to liquidate its tablet inventory — helped the company take the No. 3 spot with about 5% of the market.

Meanwhile, RIM’s PlayBook captured just 1.1% of the market in Q3, a number which is expected to fall to just 0.7% in Q4 thanks to the rising threat of the Kindle Fire, according to IDC. Neither RIM nor Motorola was among the Top Five tablet manufacturers in Q3.

One of the reasons devices like the PlayBook, TouchPad and Xoom struggled to compete with the iPad was price.

Initially, both the TouchPad and PlayBook offered a base model that cost US$499, the same as the iPad. The Xoom’s nearly $800 price tag for a 32GB device was more expensive than the comparable iPad.

Unfortunately, none of Apple’s competitors offered the breadth of applications or content services — such as movie and music downloads — that could match Apple’s iTunes and App Store.

Instead, these manufacturers treated the tablet market more closely akin to the PC wars, and hoped their devices could compete on “feeds and speeds,” by playing up the inclusion of Flash technology and USB ports (features the iPad lacks).

“Rushing into a market sometimes inhibits a company from developing a competitive advantage over any other company,” Mr. Tombak said. “Other companies can then just mimic what they’re doing and soon the profits are competed away.”

What the technology industry soon learned, was that unlike PCs, consumers were picking up tablets primarily as consumption devices; tools they could use to watch movies, read books, and surf the Internet. One of the key selling points of the Kindle Fire is Amazon’s content deliver service, Amazon Prime, which gives users access to thousands of books, movies and television shows over the Web.

“All of Apple’s competitors before Amazon had flawed product strategies, in that they were leading with feeds and speeds, rather than content services, and they were doing so at too high a price point,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Group, a market research firm based in Cambridge, Mass.

Although Android devices represented about 32% of the global tablet market in Q3, that number is expected to rise to 40% in the holiday quarter thanks to the explosive success of Kindle Fire, which some reports suggest is shipping as many as a million units a week.

Estimates vary, but experts say it costs Amazon between $185 and $205 to produce each Kindle Fire, which means the company is breaking even or taking a loss on each device, hoping to generate a profit on the sale of content and driving increased traffic to its online retailing presence.

It’s a strategy not unlike the video game industry, where manufacturers have long aimed to break even on consoles in an effort to generate a profit on games and software.

“Amazon can almost give them away and justify doing that as a cost of customer acquisition to win them in the bookstore and in the electronics shop,” said Ken Wong, a professor of marketing and business strategy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

“We’ve always seen this. At the start of every product innovation that ushers in a new category, there’s a lot of costs that are tied not just to the R&D and the commercialization, but just production costs because the parts aren’t in great supply….”

Considering the line ups which greeted HP’s TouchPad once its price was slashed to $99, and RIM’s decision to offer steep discounts on the PlayBook heading into the holiday season, one wonders what would have happened to these devices if RIM and HP had opted to sell them at $300 from launch day, even if that meant taking a loss on the device?

Of course, waiting to see how a market develops before diving in headfirst is easier said than done, especially when your competitor creates a new product category and is able to pad its bottom line with a virtual monopoly.

RIM shareholders were anxious to learn how the company planned to counter the growing influence of the iPad in the months leading up to the PlayBook’s unveiling, and waiting wasn’t really an option. While as the world’s leading computer manufacturer, HP was expected to answer the iPad.

However, it’s not just Amazon which has waited to enter the tablet fray. Software giant Microsoft Corp.’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system is designed to power both PCs and tablets, and Ms. Epps predicts the Redmond, Wash. giant could command as much as 15% of the tablet market by 2016.

“Google has lost the man who has led its government relations efforts in the Americas for more than six years, at a time when the company’s operations face intense scrutiny from legislators and regulators.”

Research In Motion Ltd., which disappointed investors last week for the third quarter in a row, will probably fall short of full-year forecasts too amid intensifying competition from Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

RIM said it will earn US$5.25 to US$6 a share, excluding some costs, for the fiscal year ending in January. To do that, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company will have to make at least US$3.12 in the second half of the year, including US$1.82 in the fourth quarter if it hits the mid-point of its third-quarter forecast. RIM has never made that much, and, given the new devices coming from Apple and Google’s partners, it’s unlikely to do so this time, said Cowen & Co LLC analyst Matt Hoffman.

“Management doesn’t see reality the way the market sees it right now,” said Hoffman, who is based in Boston and has a “market underperform” rating on the stock. “I don’t see how they can get to US$1.82 when they’re facing all this competition.”

RIM’s forecast is based in part on early demand for a range of new BlackBerrys with more advanced touch-screen features, its first new phones in a year. Still, the devices will have to stand out against Apple’s iPhone 5, new phones from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. that run Google’s Android software and Nokia Oyj handsets that use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone.

“RIM is underestimating the increasingly competitive smartphone environment,” said Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity Ltd. who has a “hold” rating on the stock. “We worry the refreshed RIM products will not change consumer sentiment or regain lost customers.”

PlayBook Plummets

Tenille Kennedy, a spokeswoman for RIM, referred to comments by executives including Co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie about strong demand for new products and said the company stands by its forecast.

The company is showing no progress in the tablet computer market. It shipped about 200,000 of its PlayBook tablets last quarter, down from 500,000 the quarter before and less than half the 490,000 that analysts had estimated. RIM’s tablet was outshipped by Apple’s iPad 46 to 1 in the latest quarter.

RIM said it will unveil new software for the PlayBook next month that will let customers use native e-mail and run Android applications. Still, analysts had cut estimates for full-year PlayBook sales to an average of 2.2 million, even before last week’s earnings report.

Apple will probably release a third version of its market- leading iPad in 2012, JPMorgan Securities analyst Mark Moskowitz said last week.

Analysts are skeptical RIM can hit its earnings forecast, even after the company said results would be at the low end of the range. Analysts expect profit of US$4.78 per share for the year, excluding some costs, according to the average estimate from a Bloomberg survey of 49 analysts.

‘Don’t Trust’

Just six of the analysts have estimates within the company’s provided range, while 43 are below that level, according to Bloomberg data.

“We don’t trust those numbers,” said Jeff Fidacaro, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group in New York who estimates RIM will make US$4.63 per share. The highest estimate is for RIM to make US$5.60 a share and the lowest is for US$3.50, according to the Bloomberg survey.

RIM fell 38 cents, or 1.6%, to US$23.55 at 9:39 a.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock had dropped 59% this year before today.

RIM’s share of the global smartphone market dropped to 12% in the second quarter from 19% a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. In the same period, Apple climbed to 18% from 14%, and Android, used in phones from Motorola and Samsung Electronics Co., rose to 43%.

Balsillie said last week that lower-than-expected demand for older devices hurt sales last quarter, when the company shipped 10.6 million BlackBerrys or more than 1 million less than analysts had estimated. RIM’s latest handsets, which run on a new BlackBerry 7 operating system, are “having an excellent reception,” he said.

RIM’s problem is that those new phones are only now making up the ground they’ve lost to current Apple and Android devices, according to Cowen & Co.’s Hoffman.

BlackBerry 7 “catches up with phones that were launched 12 months ago,” he said. “We do not anticipate BB7 being competitive once those new versions of all those operating systems are in the market over the next few weeks.”

Hoffman estimates RIM will earn US$1.20 in the third quarter, US$1.10 in the fourth quarter and US$4.43 in the full year.

Third-Quarter Forecast

The company forecast third-quarter revenue of US$5.3 billion to US$5.6 billion and shipments of between 13.5 million and 14.5 million BlackBerrys. Earnings excluding charges related to job cuts will be in the range of US$1.20 to US$1.40, it said.

Alkesh Shah, an analyst with Evercore Partners Inc. in New York, projects that RIM would need to record sales of about US$6 billion, to reach a fourth-quarter profit of at least US$1.80.

“Hitting that revenue number would be very difficult,” said Shah, who estimates revenue will be about US$5.62 billion.

RIM would have to reverse a revenue decline to make those numbers. The company would need to boost sales in the fourth quarter about 8% compared with a year earlier to hit US$6 billion, after revenue fell 9.8% last quarter. According to Bloomberg’s analyst survey, RIM’s sales are estimated to be about US$5.65 billion in the fourth quarter.

Shah says his “optimistic” prediction that RIM will ship 53 million BlackBerrys and 1.5 million PlayBooks for the year only gives the company earnings of US$4.90 for the full year.

“It’s a pretty steep ramp up to even hit the low end,” he said. “RIM is still going to have a challenging next few months.”

SAN FRANCISCO/SEATTLE — The bubble in mobile phone technology patent values may just have popped.

Now that Google Inc has agreed to a US$12.5 billion deal to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc — scooping up a trove of 17,000 phone-related patents to give itself some ground to defend its Android operating system — the most motivated buyer looks to be off the market.

“The game is completely changed as a result of Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The arms race is essentially over,” said John Amster, chief executive of RPX, a company that advises customers on patent purchases. “They have basically created through acquisition what they needed.”

Google’s move was widely seen as a response to its loss in the auction of 6,000 Nortel patents to a group led by Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Research in Motion, which fetched an unprecedented US$4.5 billion in July.

Most in the industry believe Google — a relative newcomer to the telecommunications business, without a historical accumulation of patented technology — has now put itself on more of a level footing, curbing its appetite for further purchases.

“It’s a bubble in this market space until there is a balance of power established, and I think now there is,” said Ron Laurie, managing director and patent consultant at Inflexion Point Strategy.

The heat of the patent market will be tested early next month by the auction of wireless telecommunications specialist InterDigital Inc.

Apple, Google and Microsoft — three of the most cash-rich players in technology — had expressed interest in the company, but Google’s participation in the auction is now unclear, sources told Reuters last week.

Even so, the company could still fetch a handsome price.

“There is clearly an upward sloping trend in patent value and patent value being recognized,” said James Malackowski, chief executive of Ocean Tomo, an intellectual property advisory firm which values patent portfolios as part of its services. “As with any trend, it’s never perfectly smooth, you see volatility in outlier transactions.”

What’s it worth?

How phone patents got to be so expensive all of a sudden is a factor of their strategic desirability rather than any other measure of value, experts in the field agree.

As the smartphone market exploded — threatening to revolutionize personal computing — Apple needed to protect its iPhone and Microsoft wanted Android handset makers to pay for technology it believes it invented. Google, and its handset partners, needed protection from both.

The result was a sudden spike in the value of phone-related patents on the market at a crucial time.

“I was surprised, as was everyone, by the Nortel auction, which worked out at almost US$750,000 per patent,” said one patent attorney, who asked not to be named as he has acted for various major technology players.

“That is extraordinarily high, probably by a factor of 10 higher than usually you would see a portfolio like that go for.”

On paper, patents can be valued like any other asset, said Malackowski at Ocean Tomo.

“There are three textbook ways to value intellectual property, just as you would real estate — the income approach, the cost approach, and the market approach,” he said.

“If you are looking at an apartment building, the market approach says how much do other apartment buildings sell for? For the cost approach, you would ask what it would cost to build a like unit. The income approach says look at the present value of the rents — or for patents, the present value of the expected earnings associated with owning the technology.”

But in reality, these methods are skewed by business considerations.

“Both of these transactions (Nortel and Motorola) were highly strategically motivated,” said Malackowski.

For this reason, most think Nortel was unique and an outlier, not an indication of things to come.

“We think the value was mainly driven by the process and the strategic dynamics, not by pure patent values,” said Amster at RPX. “We did not expect that was going to be a relevant, comparable transaction for the future in the patent market. People talking about value per patent is frankly silly.”

Past, future deals

If the patent bubble did just pop, the biggest loser was InterDigital.

Shares of the wireless company — due to be auctioned early in September — have fallen 17 percent since Google’s Motorola purchase was announced.

Sources familiar with the situation say Google’s participation in the auction is now uncertain, leaving the field open to bidders Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm Inc and others.

Google now has what it needs, industry experts agree.

“A key wireless patent was worth a lot more to Google on Friday (before the Motorola deal) than it was on Monday,” said Laurie at Inflexion.

The fate of Eastman Kodak Co, which is looking to sell a portfolio of digital imaging patents, may be better. The lowly shares of the ailing photographic pioneer are up 41 percent since the Motorola deal.

But Kodak’s market value is still much less than the US$2 billion to US$3 billion price tag analysts have put on its patent portfolio, which is becoming a common situation.

“A lot of companies are in that position,” said Laurie. “The patents are worth more than the company that owns them. We are going to see a lot more patent deals done as M&A deals for that reason.”

Other losers could be those who sold too soon.

Smartphone innovator Palm Inc sold itself and its groundbreaking webOS system for only US$1.2 billion to Hewlett-Packard Co last year. Few doubt the company would fetch more now. The technology may yet reappear on the market after HP ditched the system last week.

Industry experts think the technology patent market will now either revert to normal, or get back on a more gradual growth track, but wild spikes are in the past.

If there was a bubble, it is probably over now, given some competitive heat has been removed from the situation.

“The game will never be the same as it was before Nortel. Whether valuations will continue to rise or level off, it’s very hard to predict,” Laurie said.

A return to more predictable deals is most likely, said Amster at RPX. “Companies buy patents all the time, normal patent purchasing will continue. But the strategic arms race is over. It has to go back to normal.”